Seattle Zoo

Yes, our trip to the zoo was in fact that exciting.  Actually, what Luke is really excited about was seeing a huge lioness with her cubs about 10 ft in front of him on the other side of the glass.  He started immediately making his favorite cat sound, "MAAOOWW!!" (it's kind of a mix of a really loud and prolonged cat's meow and a cow's moo).

About a month ago, Ryan had a few days off work, so we decided to take advantage of the time and took a little touristy trip to Seattle.  On my second trip to Seattle, the weather was again, absolutely perfect.  It's starting to make me wonder about the veracity of these claims of "incessant cloudiness and rain".  Planning out our two days in Seattle we knew that one of the days had to be spent at the zoo.  Luke has grown into quite the animal lover so we couldn't let him down.  He is our first boy to be able to make the sounds of most animals before saying many words. Needless to say, he looked like the above picture for most of our trip at the zoo, amazed and excited by all the animals, in real life, all in one place. 

 Riding a komodo dragon (statue).  Those things are actually pretty creepy in real life!

 The boys had crawled into some kind of pretend animal burrow for kids to play in.  I'm not sure what that pile is in the middle but hopefully a real animal hadn't made it his burrow :)

 Of course we had to take a ride on the carousel.  Don't worry mom, I was standing right by Luke to keep him on his horse :)

 Near the end of our trip, we came across a really large indoor play area for the kids.  This was one of the kids' favorite stops and they played for over an hour.  I'm sure the place is packed on rainy days. 
I love how intense Grant was, while going to town on the bongos.  He also made an impromptu dance that featured lots of hopping and hip gyrations, to accompany his intense drum playing.  It was pretty much exactly what I would have done too when faced with a solitary bongo, if I didn't fear being escorted from the play area by security.  Kids get all the breaks!

 This was a rare moment when Luke was sitting still, and I jumped at the chance to sit down myself!

Tate cruising down one of the slides.  Overall, I think the zoo was the highlight of the trip.  The boys had a great time and even spent a few minutes sincerely thanking us for taking them on such a fun trip.  Maybe they have figured out that makes us more likely to take them on another?